he futility of further resistance on
the part of Pontiac was apparent. In 1765 the disappointed chieftain
gave pledges of friendship; and in the following year he and other
leaders made a formal submission to Sir William Johnson at Oswego, and
Pontiac renounced forever the bold design to make himself at a stroke
lord of the West and deliverer of his country from English domination.

For three years the movements of this disappointed Indian leader are
uncertain. Most of the time, apparently, he dwelt in the Maumee country,
leading the existence of an ordinary warrior. Then, in the spring of
1769, he appeared at the settlements on the middle Mississippi. At
the newly founded French town of St. Louis, on the Spanish side of the
river, he visited an old friend, the commandant Saint Ange de Bellerive.
Thence he crossed to Cahokia, where Indian and creole alike welcomed him
and made him the central figure in a series of boisterous festivities.

An English trader in the village, observing jealously the honors that
were paid the visitor, resolved that an old score should forthwith be
evened up. A Kaskaskian redskin was bribed, with a barrel of liquor and
with promises of further reward, to put the fallen leader out of
the way; and the bargain was hardly sealed before the deed was done.
Stealing upon his victim as he walked in the neighboring forest, the
assassin buried a tomahawk in his brain, and "thus basely," in the
words of Parkman, "perished the champion of a ruined race." Claimed by
Saint-Ange, the body was borne across the river and buried with military
honors near the new Fort St. Louis. The site of Pontiac's grave was soon
forgotten, and today the people of a great city trample over and about
it without heed.

Chapter II. "A Lair Of Wild Beasts"

Benjamin Franklin, who was in London in 1760 as agent of the
Pennsylvania Assembly, gave the British ministers some wholesome advice
on the terms of the peace that should be made with France. The St.
Lawrence and the Great Lakes regions, he said, must be retained by
England at all costs. Moreover, the Mississippi Valley must be taken,
in order to provide for the growing populations of the seaboard colonies
suitable lands in the interior, and so keep them engaged in agriculture.
Otherwise these populations would turn to manufacturing, and the
industries of the mother country would suffer.

The treaty of peace, three years later, brought the settlement which
Franklin su